Every time an American Communist or leftist dies, you can count on one thing: the New York Times will run a major obituary, and it will be misleading, incomplete, or very favorable to their life and record. The latest example of the paper’s favoritism to deceased men of the far Left is Saturday’s obituary of Irwin Silber, the first editor of the folk music magazine Sing Out! and a secret rather than open member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. I happen to know a great deal about Silber. My very first published article appeared in that magazine in 1955, and through the years, I had many run-ins with him and could have shed a great light on what he thought and believed.

The current editor of the magazine, who did not really know him, calls Silber “one of the architects of the folk revival.” That is, in my judgment, more than inaccurate. Rather, Silber’s role was to direct a growing interest in the music into very narrow Stalinist channels. As the well known folk-singer and guitar picker Happy Traum told me at the time Silber took over as editor, “It’s a coup.” Traum too was a leftist, but a rather moderate one and non-political, far more interested in the music and its art than narrow politics.

At the time, Silber was one of the most hard-nosed Stalinists in the American CP. The obituary tells readers that Silber left the Party “in the late 1950s.” (I doubt that too. In 1957, a friend and I visited Silber at The Daily Worker, where he was an editor and writer. The CPUSA did not let non-Party members write for and edit its official paper.) Other obituaries say that he left after the famous Khrushchev Report of 1956, the first indication of a power struggle among the Soviet leadership, in which Khrushchev shocked the world Communist community with his limited and incomplete account of Stalin’s crimes. The indication is that Silber, shocked at the truth of Stalin’s record, left when he realized the enormity of Stalin’s crimes.

What the paper does not say, nor do most of the other testimonials one can find if you Google his name, is that Silber left the Party because he believed Khrushchev had sold out Communism, and he longed for the return of the kind of staunch Marxist-Leninist leadership and system that Stalin had built and presided over. Years later, as Wikipedia’s account of his life gets correct (and evidently the obit writer, William Grimes, did not consult), Silber became editor of what had become a far left paper The Guardian, and used his work there to make it the spokesmen of what Silber called a “new Communist movement,” based on a favorable reevaluation of Stalin and strict Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist principles. As Wikipedia describes that movement Silber led, “these new organizations rejected the post-1956 Communist Party USA as revisionist, or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected Trotskyism and the Socialist Workers Party for its theoretical opposition to Maoism.”

Silber in fact gave a keynote speech that was printed in The Guardian, which ended by echoing Stalin and actually saying something like “let the bourgeoisie tremble, as we build a new Marxist Leninist party that will crush capitalism.” ( I am writing from vacation without access to my notes and files, so this is from memory.) The ruling class, much to Silber’s dismay, ignored his blustering.

One other example of his outlook. When the once Communist actor and singer Yves Montand appeared in a French movie that depicted the torture of those falsely arrested as traitors during the purges in post-war Communist Czechoslovakia, based on the memoir of one of the few found guilty who was not hanged, Silber lambasted it in a review, arguing that even if it was true, it would hurt the movement if revealed.

The obit writer does not ignore Silber’s one famous article: his condemnation of Bob Dylan for moving away from “protest songs” to more introspective and literary songs. Wrote Silber: “Your new songs seem to be all inner-directed now, inner-probing, self- conscious — maybe even a little maudlin or a little cruel on occasion. And it’s happening on stage, too. You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes now — rather than to the rest of us out front. Now, that’s all okay — if that’s the way you want it, Bob. But then you’re a different Bob Dylan from the one we knew. The old one never wasted our precious time.”

Dylan of course ignored Silber’s put down, and Johnny Cash wrote a letter to the magazine asking them to leave Dylan alone and to let him write as he wanted. Obit writer Grimes gets another major thing wrong. He writes that “Mr. Dylan was not amused. Mr. Silber is often proposed as a possible target of the Dylan song ‘Positively Fourth Street.’ One line in that song goes: ‘You say I let you down. You know it’s not like that/If you’re so hurt, why then don’t you show it?’”

Did Grimes even read his own article? That line could not have been written about Silber, since Silber clearly showed Dylan how he felt. In her recent memoir about her years when she was Dylan’s girlfriend, Suze Rotolo writes that “Positively Fourth Street” was about her and her sister Carla, and their hostile attitude towards him.

The song that does accurately reflect Dylan’s attitude towards Silber is “Ballad of a Thin Man,” which contains the following verse.

With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Nor does the obit write about Silber’s less well-known attack on Pete Seeger and The Weavers, in which he condemned the group for singing African-American songs when the group was made up of all white singers! Silber’s attack was akin to those coming decades later when black scholars argued that whites could not teach black history. His column was resented greatly at the time by Seeger and The Weavers, the preeminent left-wing group that had climbed to the top of the Hit Parade, until the blacklist hit.

Silber’s attack came in this latter period, after their famous 1955 revival concert at Carnegie Hall. At the time, I was taking banjo lessons from Seeger, and I asked him how he felt about it. He responded: “Irwin isn’t a musician or a folk-singer. He’s a purely literary person, who has nothing else to do but write such junk.” What he meant essentially is that Silber was a party apparatchik, not a true man of music and art.

Silber then produced a series of concerts for an ersatz Weavers imitation group, The Gateway Singers, that included one black woman along with three white male members. The group was virtually laughed out of Carnegie Hall by its audience, who was familiar with the real thing, and was incensed at this poor Weavers imitation. When I asked Silber about this, he told me: “Of course they’re crap. I couldn’t care less. I’m going to make a lot of money out of them.” Such was Irwin Silber’s ethics.

Finally, as editor of Sing Out!, he launched a crude attack on the folksinger Oscar Brand, who for decades has presided over WNYC’s weekly folk music program, “Folksong Festival,” still on the air after 65 years. Silber penned an article called “Oscar Brand Joins the Witch-Hunters,” in which he condemned Brand for purportedly naming names before HUAC, which Brand never did. What Brand had done, however, was to sing what today we would call politically incorrect songs; i.e., Confederate songs from the Civil War, songs supporting America during the Cold War, etc. Brand had been a member of People’s Songs, but unlike Seeger and company, was more of a Norman Thomas Socialist than a Communist. In Silber’s eyes this made him a traitor. To this day, one comes across people who think Brand was an “informer” because of Silber’s misleading article. Brand’s reputation and employability in folk circles suffered as a result of the article.

Silber, then, had one role: the enforcer of the Communist Party line in music. One of the last articles Silber wrote for the current incarnation of the magazine he once edited, was on what would have been Paul Robeson’s 100th birthday. Called “Legendary People’s Artist,” Silber’s 1998 article reiterated every false myth about Robeson that his Stalinist brethren ever dreamed up.

Silber eulogized Robeson in a way that reads as if we were back in the late 1940s during Robeson’s heyday, when the great baritone represented not only the struggle for racial equality in America, but the hopes of the Communist Left that America would follow the Soviet path to Communism. His article said less about Robeson than it revealed how little Silber had learned and the fact that he was still an unreconstructed Communist.

Just don’t expect to learn any of this in the newspaper of record.

correction:

I defer to Pete Karman, who writes in a hostile tone that neither Suze Rotolo or her sister wrote that “Positively 4th Street” was about either of them. I noted that I was writing from vacation, without books or notes available. Upon returning home, I acknolwedge that he is correct. Most commentators say the song could have been about scores of different people, Suze among them. The error was not done with malice. I note that I reviewed Suze’s book favorably here, and that upon reading it, I learned from a friend of hers that she liked my review a lot, and actually said it was better than many others she received, including the one in The NY Times.

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I TOO KNEW HIM BACK IN THE DAY. HE WAS AN ARROGANT PARTY BOSS WHO THOUGHT HE KNEW ALL THE ANSWERS. IN ADDITION TO THE HIS WRITINGS THAT YOU CITE, I REMEMBER A SMALL PARAGRAPH IN THE OLD SING OUT IN WHICH JOSH WHITE WAS CONDEMNED FOR ADDING A BASS PLAYER (AN UPRIGHT BASS PLAYER AT THAT) TO HIS GUITAR AND SINGING ON A RECORD HE MADE.

SILBER FOLLOWED THE PARTY LINE THAT TO MAKE MONEY WAS EVIL (ALTHO THERE WERE A NUMBER OF MILLIONAIRE COMMIES) AND THAT ANY EFFORT TO BE CREATIVE BEYOND THE LIMITS OF “FOLK MUSIC” WAS “BOURGEOIS” & “REACTIONARY”.

AS SOMEONE WHO WENT AROUND TRYING TO SELL SUBSCRIPTIONS TO “SING OUT” I WOULD ENCOUNTER SILBER IN THE MAGAZINE’S OFFICE. HE NEVER SAID “THANK YOU” OR ANY WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT. HE WAS HUMORLESS AS ANY OTHER COMMIE PARTY BOSS I KNEW IN THOSE DAYS.

HIS VIEWS THAT YOU EXPOSE ABOUT THE WEAVERS SINGING BLACK SONG COMES OUT OF THE CP’S CRAZY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, WHERE, I WAS TOLD BY A PARTY MEMBER, THAT IT WAS CONSIDERED RACIST TO ORDER A “BLACK & WHITE SODA”. INTERESTINGLY, A GROUP CALLED “THE IDELSON MUSIC PRESERVATION COMPANY” HAS JUST PUT OUT A CD CALLED “BLACK SABBATH” OF BLACK SINGERS, SUCH AS LENA HORNE, JOHNNY MATHIS, CAB CALLAWAY, AND OTHERS, SINGING JEWISH SONGS. MATHIS’ VERSION OF “KOL NIDREI” IS QUITE BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING.

ALTHO IT IS THOUGHT THAT ONE SHOULD NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD, THANK YOU FOR BRINGING SOME BALANCE TO THE NY TIMES DISHONEST OBIT. I HAVE OFTEN ADMIRED WILLIAM GRIMES BOOK REVIEWS, BUT HERE HE HAS NOT DONE HIS JOB OR WAS DISCOURAGED FROM DOING SO. I THINK YOU ARE RIGHT THAT THE GOOD GREY LADY ALWAYS WANTS TO SMOOTH OVER THE LIVES OF RABID STALINISTS. I THINK A.M. ROSENTHAL, OF BLESSED MEMORY, WOULD BE HOLLERING “FOUL!”
SHALOM, CANTOR BOB COHEN

“The obituary tells readers that Silber left the Party “in the late 1950s.”

Stanley Levison also officially left the Communist Party—but his heart and soul remained loyal to its core beliefs. One has to be quite gullible to believe such an act is meaningful. We should never forget that all totalitarian ideologies teach their members to lie to outsiders.

The NYTImes is the last bastion of whitewashing communist excesses and atrocities. While Duranty’s work no longer lives on in a column, it survives in the subtleties each day, wafting from the perfumed caskets, where truth is cremated or buried daily.

It’s a sort of journalistic ethic cleansing ritual, observed by the faithful, who have never met a Stalin apologist, or for that matter, a Chavez apologist, a Pol Pot apologist/whitewasher, a mass murdering Mao apologist, or a Che apologist/whitewasher…that it wouldn’t place on a pedestal.

There seems to be a new wave of apologia mania sweeping the far left reaches of the political spectrum, where the inane and insane reside, now looking to give a little cleansing to Hitler as well. Oliver Stone has permanent residence in this loony bin, but he has neighbors. And they all have the NYTImes delivered to their doorstep.

No man or woman of honor should continue working in such a place, ah…but they do. And perhaps THAT is the saddest fact of all. Those who know, from the inside…and remain silent.

The appalling silence of the good people

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

What a bad time to be settling old scores! Both the Times obit and the Wikipedia article (of which you seem to approve) describe a man whose accomplishments were much more substantial than you allow. All in all, a sad and mean-spirited hatchet job.

Joseph, read with greater breadth, from people who actually know from direct experience. Silber was a unrepentant Stalinist. Where ever Stalinists gain power millions die for the revolution. The rest live in a grey little world.

“Settling old scores” usually refers to something personal, like an argument over a woman or money, not a lifetime devoted to one of the most horrible evils ever perpetuated on the face of the earth, including the murder of millions. We, today, are still dealing with the consequences of Stalinism, which gave rise to many other evils, including the present Iranian policy of proxy warfare against civilians.

Let’s put this through what I call the “Nazi test.” Subsitute Nazi for Communist in this review. Would you feel the same way about Mr. Radosh’s fisking of this obit?

I know the left says it’s not PC to compare the two systems. Why do you think that is? I am going to break that rule. I suspect even Ron Radosh will be uncomfortable. We all know the Nazis are the gold standard for an evil regime. How do the Communists stack up against it?

(1) As measured by nutrition, access to healthcare, clothing housing and life expectancy the Soviet Union never reached the standard of living in 1939 Nazi Germany.

(2) The Soviet Union murdered more people prior to 1933 then the Nazis would murder in their twelve years in power. The Soviets kept up the murder rate from 1933-45 and then continued to murder even past Stalin’s death. Even after Stalin was gone that at best the repression in the USSR was like the early Nazi period.

(3) While you had to actually be a political opponent to get sent off to a Nazi concentration camps under Stalin you could get sent off for a look or a misspoke word at an inopportune time. What is utterly amazing is that Party members marked for death would shout out “long live Stalin, long live the Party” just before their executions.

Communism doesn’t even rise to the moral level of the Nazis so spare me the outrage over Silber’s “many accomplishments.” A Stalinist deserves no more adulation then a member of Hitler’s SS.

Gee, tdinva’s response if full of news — for those who haven’t read a book in 40 years. Now here’s some news for him: American commies of the past (including RR) are in no way comparable to SS men. Politically naive? Willfully blind? Sure. But they were also in the forefront of the civil rights battle decades before it was joined even by the moderate left.

Hatchet job? Why is it that criticism of left is always hate speech or a “hatchet job”? I suppose we wouldn’t hear this from you if saint Irwin was a tea party activist…Sibler, like his comrade Bill Ayers are two peas in a pod and their central goal in life is to destroy “capitalism” and replace it with a government controlled economy. Certainly Sibler would be advocating any folk songs that praised Chavez even though Venezuela is spinning predictictably into an abyss.

It may be that, there was no “score” to have adjusted. Suppose, death can be a time to simply say some of what knows on topics related to the diseased.
But however those things might have been, the article appears to be of sound construction, . . .

Ron,
I like this from “Visions of Johanna” better than your choice, even though I have no idea who it was actually intended for.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall.

Love this article. I’ve long thought that the best put-down lyrics of all time were the last few lines of “Positively Fourth Street”:

I wish that for just one time I could stand inside your shoes,
And just for that one moment, I could be you.
I wish that for just one time I could stand inside your shoes,
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.

Great to know the possible back story behind these great lines! And God knows, Silber earned them.

When Alger Hiss died in late 1996, both the Times and Newsday, Long Island’s regional daily, ran fawning obituaries of him and lamented the “persecution” he’d endured…without once mentioning his conviction for perjury to the House Un-American Activities Committee, nor the verification by Soviet cables decrypted by the Venona Project that Hiss was, indeed, a Soviet agent.

Trust not the Old Media, especially when it comes to the deeds of Communists and traitors.

Nice to know that we can count on Ron Radosh manning the barricades against the dead red menace. Have you considered stealing a page from the Book of Mormon and converting Irwin Silber into a neocon?
I read Suze Rotolo’s book. Indeed, she’s a lifelong friend. She never wrote or said, as far as I know, that she or Carla were the subjects of or inspiration for Positively Fourth Street.

On Alger Hiss: John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Vassiliev have published, “SPIES; THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KGB IN AMERICA, with notes that Vassiliev took in Russia on the KGB. There you find definitive proof that Hiss was an agent of the Soviet Union.

This is all a lie. Mr. Ayers told me so. Here are more lies from rich white people: HAVANA – Cuba announced Monday it will cast off at least half a million state employees by mid-2011 and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs — the most dramatic step yet in President Raul Castro’s push to radically remake employment on the communist-run island.

M,
The difference between this site and Huff Post is vast – it is the difference that our world struggles with daily. I don’t care for the endless invective either but it appears wise that one must ultimately stand for something in their life and moral choices need to made.

Based on the historical evidence available to all of us, I (like most) oppose communism. Sibler was an ardent supporter of communism and structured his life to further it’s growth, despite disturbing evidence of mass murders and a frightening cultural intolerence.

This is simply a fact that cannot be overlooked when discussing this man’s life.

Yes Miraim, we are intolerant of those who want to destroy personal freedom and personal responsibility. HuffPuff is intolerant of people who don’t want government to control people’s lives at every turn and want people to be responsible for their own actions.

People are more intolerant today in America because an increasing minority rejects the ideas that America was founded on. When one group wants to destroy a people’s way of life then there will be conflict. Be prepared because it won’t be peaceful and we will not in any way let people with monsterous ideas off the hook.

Thanks for this article Ron. As a folksinger myself, as well as a huge fan of Dylan, I appreciate the story being told and the record being set straight.
When Mitch Miller died recently, there was very little said about it. Watch when the old commie Seeger finally leaves his mortal coil. The outpouring of grief and the list of accomplishments will be overwhelming. And the fact that he was an apologist for Stalin until even he had to (almost) admit Staln’s crimes will be glossed over and guys like Joseph will say this is hardly the time for facts.

Why am I not surprised? I have been in the New York media since 1970;starting a radio station WMCA, which was owned by R. Peter Straus, who was married to Ellen Sulzberger. They were not memebers of the party, but as liberal as any body could possibly be. I believe the New York Times has a serious mental problem in which it refuses to do what journalists are supposed to do. Report fairly and editorialize without revealing a need to paint Stalinist as just another person with a strong viewpoint.

Thanx for the enlightenment on a dark corner of socialist history in the U.S.A. (But please don’t write “communist” when the proper word to apply is “stalinist”, even if you’re not/no longer a marxist.)

As for (gee; totally unexpected) the rabid anti-communist commentary here… pfft. See youse all in the Third (Thralled) World, eh?

I see you have decided not to post any of my comments and I find this odd considering what this website supposedly stands for.
I won’t waste your precious time anymore and I am sorry that my comments have not met with your lofty standards.

RON,
FIRST RATE PIECE. ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND IMPORTANT TO BE SAID. AND SHAME TO THE NYTIMES.

SMALL COMMENT TO ADD. YOU DO REALIZE YVES MONTAND IS JUST ABOUT THE ONLY MAJOR ONE TIME COMMUNIST DEVOTEE THAT ON THE FALL OF THE USSR DECLARED ON FRENCH TV AND WAS QUOTED ON FRONT PAGES OF ENTIRE FRENCH PRESS THAT “WE WERE ‘CONS’ (FRENCH DEROGATORY TERM FOR ROUGHLY ‘ASSHOLES’ )
TO HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN BY COMMUNIST PAP.

Hey Ron,
Tom Hayden is coming to speak to my class.
What was it he called you back in the day? A CIA agent?
Funny that he himself had to admit you were right when Sobell did – even if he didn’t use your name. XD

Ron Radosh did get Seeger to admit not long ago that yes, well, maybe he had been a little over enthusiastic and under critical of one of the most murderous regimes in history. But he meant well and was for peace and justice and all that stuff. Phooey.

And yes, Thomas, the outpouring of sadness and warmth when Seeger moves on will not mention much, if at all, the fact that most of his life was devoted to supporting a hideous set of political ideas. But he meant well, you know.

The closest Seeger got to apologizing was to say that he should have asked to see the Gulag. What? Asked to see it? Asked who? “Conmrade Stalin, I would like to see the Gulag.”
“Why, sure, Pete. Let me call you another limousine. We’ll just zoom you to Vorkuta or Kolyma or both or anywhere else. Your choice.”
With the length of Seeger’s Soviet loyalty, I doubt that this grotesque comment is mere naivete.

Interesting that Radosh, who was born in 1937, would have been 14 years old when Irwin Silber became editor of Sing Out magazine. Somehow, I sincerely doubt that Happy Traum confided in a 14-year old that Silber had achieved some sort of revolutionary coup when he took over the editorial reins of Sing Out. But like so much of the tripe that Radosh has published over the years, he has, like so many people on the right, successfully blurred the lines between reality and conveniently formulated right wing idiocy. Really, Ron, aren’t you ever embarrassed that you are in bed with a bunch of homophobic, Islamic-hating, constitution-bashing idiots like Prager, Hannity, Beck and Palin. Even if you wanted to turn your back on the CP and the left, do you really have to embrace so many embarrassing positions. Ah well, I guess the pay is better on the right, because you always seem to know how to wring the most value out of whoever is in vogue at the time.

I will try posting this yet a second time, to see if you are “brave” enough to have Radosh’ integrity challenged.

According to Radosh, he was told by Happy Traum, at the time Irwin Silber became editor of Sing out Magaine, that it was, in effect, a “coup.” By my calculations, Radosh would have been 14 at the time, and Happy Traum would have been 13. Anybody else find this hard to believe?

Amazing the lengths some people will go to demonize and vilify. This is just one of many factual errors in Radosh’s piece. Read with a (BIG) grain of salt.

“As the well known folk-singer and guitar picker Happy Traum told me at the time Silber took over as editor, “It’s a coup.”

That’s what I love about right-wingers. They somehow think their words mean exactly what they want them to mean, rather than what they obviously say. Like if you call Obama a socialist enough times, it will magically become so.